Youthful Composers in Music and Vision 17 ottobre

Youthful Composers

GIUSEPPE PENNISI listens to
contemporary music at two Italian festivals

The international music press very seldom deals with contemporary music in Italy, even though (on a yearly basis) as many hours of contemporary music are performed in Rome as in Berlin, and since 1930 Venice has featured a festival of contemporary music. Historians say that the then head of government, Benito Mussolini, was a fan of contemporary music and intended to challenge Salzburg with the Venice festival where all the composers disliked by Hitler and Goebbels were routinely invited. In this magazine, contemporary music in Italy is occasionally reported on. Recently, reviewing European contemporary music at the Enescu Festival in Bucharest (Trends and Tendencies, 15 September 2013), I noticed a change in orientation from the Second Viennese School and Darmstadt to minimalism. Without carrying a complete review, I intended to check this on two further occasions: the first is a French-Italian Festival which ran 24-25 September 2013 at the Villa Medici in Rome. The second is a revival of Salvatore Sciarrino's 1978 Singspiel Aspern at the Teatro Malibran in Venice, as part of the contemporary music festival. I was at the Villa Medici Festival on both days, and on 2 October at the Malibran Theatre in Venice on 2 October 2013.

Académie de France pensionnaires at Rome's Villa Medici. Photo © 2013 Malik Nejmi. Click on the image for higher resolution

These two very different events have youthful composers as a common element. (Sciarrino, of course, was born in 1947 and was young when Aspern was premiered in Florence thirty-five years ago). Villa Medici is the Rome 'home' of the Académie de France. In a splendid Renaissance villa, it houses pensionnaires (boarders) selected following a severe competition. Quite a few of them have the potential for a great career: Berlioz and Bizet were among the Villa pensionnaires. Each year the Villa organizes a contemporary music festival called Le Contretemps. The 24-25 September event was not part of such a festival but it was a two day program organized by the pensionnaires themselves and by their Italian counterparts. Also, in addition to music, it dealt with cinema, theatre, photography and philosophy. Aspern had a young touch because the production was organized with Venice Architecture University which provided stage sets, costumes, lighting and also some of the actors in less important roles. Music, thus, was not the only focus of the 24-25 September Villa Medici Festival.

A scene from Sciarrino's 'Aspern' at Fondazione Teatro La Fenice. Photo © 2013 Michele Crosera. Click on the image for higher resolution

The most interesting composition was by Laurent Durupt: Studi Sulla Notte. Durupt, thirty-five years old, is, at the same time, a pianist and a composer (with experience of, and interest in, electronic music). He has been a Villa Medici pensionnaire for eighteeen months, teaches piano at the Paris Conservatoire and his works are widely performed in Europe and in the United States. Studi Sulla Notte is a contemporary 'notturno' for three instruments (piano, percussion and clarinet), video and electro acoustics. There were two special aspects. Of the three performers (Laurent Durupt at the piano, his brother Remy on percussion and Massimo Carozzo playing clarinet), the clarinetist would discover the electronic machinery only at the moment of the performance -- just like the audience. The visual part (by Emanuele Becheri) is closely integrated with the music. In the dark 'grand salon' of the Villa, the windows and the balcony are slowly opened to show the lights of Rome underneath. Also very thin lighting games and electronic pulses are designed to give a sensual flair to the 'notturno'. Studi Sulla Notte lasts about fifty minutes. The score is sophisticated, with calligraphic minimalism, and allows for a great deal of improvising. In the Villa Medici setting, there was almost a feeling of baroque, but of baroque of the pathetic school rather than of the most commonly known sparkling baroque. Certainly, the composition was inspired by and constructed on the specifics of the Villa Medici 'grand salon'. Is it designed to be performed only once? or only there? Again, many baroque compositions were conceived to be performed solely once and in a very specific place.

Laurent Durupt. Photo © Malik Nejmi. Click on the image for higher resolution

Sciarrino's Aspern is quite different in that it was commissioned by the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino and has been seen in quite a few theatres, even though it is not performed as often as the composer's other works such as Lohengrin, Macbeth and especially Luci Mie Traditrici, which has been staged in some twenty different opera houses. Aspern is a morbid thriller based on Henry James' short novel The Aspern Papers. In the late nineteenth century, the search for the 'Aspern Papers' -- ie unpublished writing by a poet -- is filled with many mysteries; the ending too is quite ambiguous. As in Studi Sulla Notte , the plot develops only in the dark at night. Sciarrino calls it a Singspiel because there are specific musical numbers, alternating with spoken parts. Mario Angius conducted a small ensemble. The Singspiel requires only a coloratura soprano (the young and attractive Zuzana Marková), a main actor (Francesco Girardi in several roles) and, as said, a few students in minor roles. The score is, once again, minimalist with quotations from Mozart, Verdi and even Venetian eighteenth century popular songs.

Copyright © 17 October 2013 Giuseppe Pennisi,
Rome, Italy